Hoi An & the My Son Ruins

Hoi An

We arrived in Hoi An just after dawn and fresh off the night bus, managing to find our hotel relatively easily. But as check-in would not be for another four hours, we were quickly on to the next order of business: find coffee. As painful as lack of sleep can be, I so appreciate experiencing a place as it’s waking up. Later, when the streets are bustling and the cafes and restaurants are spilling out onto the sidewalks and there are tourists everywhere you look, you feel like you know a secret version of the place, and it’s not so hard to feel like it’s yours. Maybe it was this early morning time, but Hoi An was where we really started to come into our own as travelers. We sampled food from a number of street kitchens, including our first breakfast in town (pictured above) as well as a delightfully simple dish called cơm gà, which is shredded chicken and rice with fresh herbs and a dark chili paste, and – of course – the ever-present bánh mì sandwiches. We also had clothes made from a few of the tailors in town, bought our first souvenirs, and sent a package home, stripping ourselves of all the excess stuff we’d learned we really didn’t need. We even rented bikes and rode out of town to the beach for an afternoon. But most importantly? We found a favorite spot and let ourselves go there multiple times. Cafe 43 was not terribly convenient to our hotel or many of the other places in town, but it was owned and run by an incredibly friendly family and had some of the cheapest ‘fresh beer’ in town (6,000 VND for a glass – or about 30 cents). Our last night in Hoi An was spent here watching the Vietnamese soccer team play against Malaysia (we rooted for the home team, naturally, although they were heartily defeated).

My Son Ruins

In the continuing theme of early-morning experiences, we opted to do a sunrise tour of the My Son ruins, tiptoeing out of our hotel around 5am to be on the first bus to arrive at the ruins that day. The site was a religious center in the 4th century with most of the temples dedicated to Cham kings. Archaeologists don’t fully understand how the temples were built, which added an element of mystique to the experience in addition to a sort of shrug-your-shoulders response. Our guide did her best to give us some context into the religious and cultural meaning behind what we were seeing, but walking around the semi-deserted grounds did almost as much to conjure what this place was – or at least might have been – in its prime.

South Central Coast & the Night Bus

Mui Ne

Getting to the coast was great. My brain felt a little like it was buzzing after Ho Chi Minh City, so a town with one road paralleling the sea for about 5km seemed blissfully simple. And blissful it was, despite not being quite what I had expected. Mui Ne has had problems with coastal erosion over the years, which means the beaches there are not very deep and sea walls have been built up to protect the various hotels and restaurants along the shore. The hotel we stayed in was U-shaped, facing the sea, with tables and chairs in a central courtyard area, and a small beach with umbrellas and lounge chairs for guests. Our room was at one of the tips of the U-shape, just a dozen or so steps off the beach. This part of the coast has a slightly different climate from the south, and was just finishing its rainy season. All of the run-off from the rain is funneled into the sea, stirring it up and turning it closer to a slate grey as opposed to the usual turquoise during the rest of the year. I’m not exactly selling this place, but it was quiet, and it felt like it was ours, and we fell for it, hard. I’m sure it helped, too, that the proprietors were a warm and welcoming Indian family from Northern California.

Fresh Seafood

No surprise that fresh seafood was in abundance here. We watched every morning as the fishing boats went out, each a round basket-like boat with a single paddle, but linked together and towed by one boat at the front with a motor. Here we learned about bo ke, which we came to understand meant fresh grilled seafood. Dozens of open-air restaurants with tanks set up, left eerily empty during the daytime, but filled with a wide selection of live and fresh seafood as soon as the day’s catch came in. To order, you simply point out what you’re interested in, they weigh it, grill it, and bring it to your table. As we walked down the strip, trying to figure out which seafood shack looked the best, we kept seeing the same kind of shellfish on all the grills topped with something green. Our curiosity was piqued. When we settled on a spot, we struggled through the language barrier to make sure we were ordering just that.  Turns out it was clams – although there was a brief moment where we thought we were eating something new and exotic called ‘lam’ – and they were the best thing we’d eaten yet on the trip. Maybe still. They were topped with herbs (maybe cilantro, though they called it celery) and a little oil, grilled open face, and then garnished with crushed peanuts and a healthy squirt of lime. The herbs are understated enough to let the clam flavor shine through while the peanuts lend it a subtle sweetness and the lime does its citrus thing, deftly brightening the flavors of everything. We started with a half kilo, but before the night was out, we had put away a kilo each.

The Night Bus

Our next destination was Hoi An, much further up the coast, so we opted to take a night bus to pass the 11 hour journey. Any bus ride we’ve taken has had a distinct duality to it: there’s whatever is happening INSIDE the bus, but also all that’s going on OUTSIDE the bus. And the soundtrack uniting these dual experiences is a continual series of honking. It sounds like it shouldn’t be, but somehow, the whole experience feels peaceful. Like you’re riding around in a little protective bubble. It had started raining shortly after we left, and continued steadily throughout the night. We pulled off to the side of the road a few times – perhaps to switch drivers, or maybe just for a break – and I remember looking out at the wind and the rain whipping at some palm trees across the street. It felt like a relief not to be responsible for our own experience and to be given some time to reflect. I only slept in the final few hours, from about 3am on and off until we arrived around 6am. But the time passed easily. It felt like letting go.

Arriving in Vietnam: Ho Chi Minh City

First Impressions

Holy crap are there a lot of motorbikes in Ho Chi Minh City. Entire families on one motorbike. Children almost never wearing helmets. Tens of hundreds of them converging at major intersections. Everyone wearing a mask (think surgical or dental), but in some hip color or pattern to match their outfit or their bag, like a real and true accessory. And crossing the street! I balked the first time we had to do it – how does one even go about this? The answer is simply to do so slowly and deliberately and as if you won’t die in the process. The incredible part is that they yield. Generously. And graciously. And somehow, without missing a beat or even really slowing down. There is a fluidity to the traffic here that I have not seen before. And all I can think is that the Vietnamese people must have very strong core muscles from all that balancing.

The Food

The two food highlights of Ho Chi Minh City were pho and banh xeo, national and local specialties, respectively. I already knew that pho was a rice-noodle soup with beef or chicken, typically eaten for breakfast, but I had no idea about the pile of fresh herbs, chiles, and lime wedges that it came with so that the diner could dress his or her soup to their liking. Thai basil, sawtooth coriander, cilantro, the list goes on depending on where you’re ordering and what’s on hand. It only took a few days for us to develop our own tastes and habits on the best way to dress a bowl of pho.

For the banh xeo, everything was new, even the concept. Banh xeo is a rice-flour crepe stuffed with bean sprouts, shrimp, and pork, named for the sizzling ‘xeo’ sound the batter makes when it’s poured into the pan. This, too, was served alongside a plate piled high with yet a different variety of herbs and greens and a bowl of amber liquid in which a few sparse rice-noodles appeared to be floating. We sat. Casually – or so we hoped – we cast sidelong glances at fellow diners who appeared more well-versed than us, but it was one of the proprietors who noticed our floundering, and came over to ask if it was our first time. Brusquely yet kindly, she showed us the drill: take a sweet lettuce leaf, then a mustard leaf, then some thai basil, then some lemon basil, then something minty-tasting, then something like celery, then some cilantro, then something aptly named ‘fish plant’, and then a chunk of the pancake, roll it all together, dip it in the fish sauce (see above: amber liquid) and eat!

Being a Tourist

And then, there’s the complicated and sometimes-awkward task of being a tourist in Vietnam. With the exception of the motorbike, the two images I most associate with the country are Ho Chi Minh’s face and the Vietnamese flag. Both are everywhere, and I suppose understandably so, but their connotations can feel rote at times or simply elusive. During our time in Ho Chi Minh City, we took a day trip to see the Cu Chi tunnels, used by the Viet Cong throughout the 1960s to facilitate control of the region. America’s indelible mark on Vietnamese history is a weighty part of my identity here, but confusingly so, as it is not a part of my own personal experience. And with 65% of the population under the age of 30, it is not a part of their personal experience, either. So what is the correct – or at the very least, appropriate – mind set?

On a slightly lighter note, we also went to see the Cao Dai Great Temple. Cao Dai is a newer religion (founded in the 1920s), and boasts some 2 million followers. It combines Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Christianity, Islam, and native Vietnamese spiritualism. We were welcomed to be bystanders at a noontime service, but having very little context into what we were seeing, it felt odd, and even a little intrusive. Being a tourist always means being an outsider, but it also means working to understand the places you visit. Despite feeling somewhat uncomfortable during the service, it drove me to read more about what I had seen, and the images of the beautifully tiled hall stand out as a strong memory from our time in the south.

Hong Kong, at Long Last

Our itinerary for Hong Kong consisted primarily of getting over jet lag. Everything else was to be a bonus, so we kept our scheduling to a minimum. We usually ventured out from the hotel once in the morning, and then again in the evening after an afternoon rest. We were staying in the mid-levels, which is a neighborhood tucked partway uphill from the Central area of Hong Kong island, and with a convenient system of escalators that run downhill in the morning, and then turn around and run uphill the rest of the day. If you’re used to standing in a crowded subway car to commute to work, this doesn’t sound like such a bad alternative.

When I think of Hong Kong, I think of it on two levels: macro and micro. On the one hand, there’s the crisp and clean skyline, filled with modern skyscrapers, one towering higher than the next. And on the other is the cluttered street-level reality, shop after shop spilling with goods, so many lights flashing, and garbage littering the street. As a pedestrian in Hong Kong, you hover somewhere in the middle. The city has a veritable maze of elevated walkways, allowing you to cocoon yourself in a less stimulating environment. And so my view of the city was either within one of these, or the more severe options: UP or DOWN. It was hard to reconcile these two versions of the city in my mind, but I realized it reminded me very much of NYC. And that, in and of itself, was comforting.

I’ve been evaluating each place we visit as though it were a place we might live, but I’m trying to let go of this habit. On a trip this long, it’s tough not to play that game in your mind. Where is ‘home’ if it’s not wherever we are? But it’s tiring. The reality is that we don’t want to live most of these places, that was never the point, and so the effort should go towards enjoying them for what they are. It’s a delight to find a billboard advertising a company you could see yourself working for, should you ever live here, but it’s also a delight to let the quirks of a particular place endear you to it. Like the ultimate old-meets-new: bamboo scaffolding.

Oh, and the food! With our priorities being what they were, we did not eat as adventurously as we might have, but I will leave you with this.

Best meal of Hong Kong: Shrimp Wonton Noodle Soup @ Tsim Chai Kee’s Noodle House.

Broth that tasted lightly of seafood with a hint of sweetness; wontons with delicate dough and fresh shrimp filling; noodles cooked al dente so that they held up as you ate your soup; and a hefty topping of green onions to make it a balanced meal.

We sampled a lot of wonton noodles, as well as barbecue, dim sum, and our fair share of Starbucks, repeatedly offering the puzzling ‘Italian Sausage Stick (Xmas Style)’. But nothing came even close to this first bowl of wonton noodles. So delicate!

Two Childhood Homes + Trip Prep

Fall is my favorite season. There can be a sadness to it, yes, but with it comes reflection and so much beauty. Look at the rich orange of those pumpkins – and I don’t even like Halloween! It was a good season to end our time in the States. After ping-ponging our way up and down the east coast, we settled for a final few weeks in Maryland. We arrived in time to gather with family and friends for Yom Kippur and stayed to enjoy quiet time with my parents, tucked cleverly (or so we hoped) in-between preparations for the trip. Amidst all this chaos we’re building for ourselves, natural settings seem to be the best antidote to date. I am still drawing positive benefits from the lazy Sunday we spent out near Sugarloaf Mountain in Comus, MD. Clear blue skies, warm apple cider, the yellows just starting to come in, and crisp-but-not-cold so you could ride the whole way with the windows down. Thinking about that day still brings a smile to my face.

And then came California.

We spent two weeks here, as well, timing our arrival to coincide with other family out visiting. Our schedule was to spend as much time with as many of the people we love in the area, family and friends alike. And – of course – yet more trip preparations. The weather was gorgeous the entire time we were there. Or at least that’s my memory. And we managed to get in a good bit in those same restorative natural settings. We even caught a sunrise over the Bay Bridge.

During this last month in the States, I remember feeling that there simply was not enough time to get everything done between now and when we left for Hong Kong. The closer we got to our departure, it seemed, the more our preparations amped up, and the longer the lists seemed to grow. I still don’t fully understand all that we spent our time doing. I’m sure a lot of it was nerves, but I certainly don’t regret all that went into our preparations. Already they’ve come in handy. But so, too, has the time we spent at our respective childhood homes, with our parents, and amongst our friends. Now that we’ve left, I can see that was just as integral as finding the big bottle of Pepto Bismol. Well, maybe not JUST as integral, but you know what I’m saying. When all was said and done, we were ready to start the bigger journey, and not just because of the table’s worth of toiletries we’d managed to collect.